A long time ago on a planet far far away....

[Ellimist]

What's your exploration plan, and how much is known about the world? Is it a small donut map with possibly a barbarian island in the middle? Or possibly outlying barbarian islands.

I stopped exploring at the point where I realized there wasn't going to be any real "contested" terrain. Serdoa has explored extensively, however, and I've learned the basics from him. I believe the players are arranged in a rectangle with tundra strips between them and the barbarians outside of the "box".

Also, do we know if there's any risk of barbarians building wonders? I'm still a bit confused about the barbarians, is it correct that it's just an AI player who was run by Ruff for a little while?

As far as I know, yes. I'm not sure if they're going to be building wonders, but it's prudent to assume that they will. I anticipate that they'll try to win like any other AI does... space race.

Also, would there be any use in settling directly on the stone and marble? They're on tundra and the resource bonuses are weak, you could get +1 in the city centre instead and not have to waste worker turns on quarries that you might not want to work anyway.

I doubt it. NobleHelium and haphazard are correct. I won't get any city square bonuses by settling directly on them, and the marble will have reasonable 1f/2h/3c yields. I'm not worried about the worker turns, I can produce workers very quickly and the opportunity costs of doing so are lower than usual due to happiness scarcity.

[Ellimist]

So, I chatted awhile with Serdoa yesterday and we discussed some of the options available to us. At this point, we're basically unofficially allies and we're exploring the possibilities of rushing the other two(me against Peg, him against Nakor.) I learned some useful info from him, such as the fact that I have horses 2W of my capital, and apparently everybody may have copper in their BFC(not totally surprising I guess.)

Nakor still has just one city but Peg founded his second 4N-1E of Herbert. Oddly enough, I'm the only (human) player currently in slavery.

I'll put some screenshots up when I get the next turn(T40).

[haphazard1]

Oddly enough, I'm the only (human) player currently in slavery.

Maybe the low happy cap situation is making them reluctant to use the whip? I am a big fan of slavery, but tight happy caps can make it much less useful -- sometimes so much so that I will just stay in the default civic to save myself the anarchy. This early in the game settlers and workers can be used to control growth.

[Ellimist]

Maybe the low happy cap situation is making them reluctant to use the whip? I am a big fan of slavery, but tight happy caps can make it much less useful -- sometimes so much so that I will just stay in the default civic to save myself the anarchy. This early in the game settlers and workers can be used to control growth.

That's what I was thinking as well. I haven't whipped yet, nor do I plan to use it much, but I still adopted slavery at the "optimal" time(the turn my settler was moving toward Herbert.)

I do plan to use slavery, just not very frequently. I particularly like whipping settlers at size 6(down to 3).

[Catwalk]

I've tried hard to love the whip in my game, but it's difficult. I've had a fairly low happy cap there as well, in spite of founding a religion. My main problem was that I failed to set up whipping ahead of time, and just used it whenever I saw a chance to whip off at least 2 pop.

[Ellimist]

Yeah, sometimes the trick is recognizing which situations are favorable for whipping.

T40 is in. I hadn't planned on building a fourth worker yet, but the situation seemed right for it, so I went ahead. I really don't think I'll regret having so many early workers.

My 3 workers are dividing their attention for the next few turns between horse, pig, and rice(cottage). The riverside horse is particularly good for a financial leader, as it will become a 1f/4h/3c tile.

[Catwalk]

You only need one road on the FP SE of Herbert for trade routes, right? Will connect it to the river and the river will connect it to Verne.

[Ellimist]

Yeah, probably. So far, the half-completed road fragments between the two cities have used only "salvaged" worker turns that otherwise would have been lost.
That's one reason I'm building another worker, to get ahead of the game on worker improvements/roads and also keep chopping.

[Ellimist]

We're up to turn 43. Fishing and the worker finished this turn and next turn the pastures will finish for some rapid growth in Verne. Also, everybody's now in slavery now except Serdoa, and "barbarian" is up to monarchy at least.
Overview:

Also, my cities apparently got trade routes with each other once Herbert's borders popped.

Verne:

Herbert:

I finally have graphs on Pegasus, so next turn I'll switch EPs over to Serdoa. Here's the assorted data for Peg, myself, and Nakor.
Demographics:

Score:

GNP:

MFG:

Food:

Power:

Culture:

Espionage:

Fog reading reveals there's a landmass to my southwest. It looks like a small island, and I suspect it may have some of the missing luxury resources. Perhaps there's also some sort of advanced barbarian guardian as well, a machine gunner or something.

[Ellimist]

Two demographic things to note:

Nakor has some water in his capital's BFC, and both of them have (probably) produced a non-warrior military unit.